Modern optical sky surveys like Pan-STARRs and the Palomar Transient
Factory open new windows into a vast and dynamic sky, and their
enormous datasets demand dramatic improvements in both data-mining
algorithms and follow-up instrumentation. I will present new ways to
search for transiting exoplanets in supernova-survey datasets and
demonstrate a novel application of weak-lensing techniques to find and
characterize very close binary systems in wide-field images. I will go
on to describe our recently-commissioned robotic laser adaptive optics
system, which is designed for high-efficiency follow-up of the
thousands of targets discovered by large surveys. Finally, I will
introduce a unique extremely-wide-field survey instrument that will
take advantage of long, dark, Polar nights to obtain massively
increased sensitivity to rare transient events.